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Veterinary Practice News Editorial Blog:
Friday, March 5, 2010
Where Did that Tumor Go?
By Marilyn Iturri
Editor of VeterinaryPracticeNews.com and Veterinary Practice News
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Nerve sheath tumor in a 10-year-old Sheltie | I’m not a veterinarian. I’m a journalist and an animal lover, and count myself lucky to work in the veterinary community.
Leading Veterinary Practice News for some years now, I’ve often heard the expression “That tumor has a dog.” And I understood that it means that some owner let a tumor become enormous before bothering to take his animal to the veterinarian.
But the visceral impact of the statement didn’t hit me until this week.
I was proofing Dr. Phil Zeltzman’s Surgical Insights column for April, focusing in particular on the captions for two photos. One read: “Nerve sheath tumor in a 10-year-old Sheltie.”
OK, I thought, where’s the mass? I looked at the photo, at the animal shaved, intubated and lying supine. Where’s the growth? That’s odd, I thought. I must be missing it.
Then it hit me – that wasn’t the animal’s chest, it WAS the tumor.
Money for medical care for animals can be hard to find, especially when there are children in a family. Times are hard. But these people had arranged surgery for their pet. What took them so long?
Massive growths rarely pop up over night. Some can be fast growing, true enough. But are owners of stricken pets really in that much denial?
Years ago, after my own bout with breast cancer, I found a small swelling on my cocker spaniel’s belly. We went to see the veterinarian almost immediately.
I declined a fine needle aspiration, having learned first-hand that FNA results aren't always reliable. Let's just take it out, I told Dr. B. Turned out that the mass was mammary cancer. But finding it early meant that all we had to do was cut it out. Eliot lived well into his 16th year.
I’m no hero, and at that time I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on veterinary care. Still don’t, for that matter. But it had to be done, and I didn’t wait for it to rival the size of a beach ball.
Appalled, I e-mailed Dr. Zeltzman about the size of both masses in the photos he sent. His patient reply: “People are people.”
Then he said a colleague was referring to him a beagle “attached to a basketball-sized mass.”
That made me angry. What the heck is wrong with people, anyway?
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